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My high school buddy Jeremy came to visit Sarah and me this weekend. He flew out to Sweden for work and then rerouted himself through Copenhagen to put a Danish notch on his passport belt. In the "What should we show Jeremy?" planning process, Sarah and I compiled a list of things to do that probably would've taken about a week, and could in no way be shoehorned into the day and half Jeremy had to see the city. Whenever we found a new kebab place (the one under Nørrebro Station) or remembered how much we liked our jazz spot (Blågård's Apotek) we added it to the impossibly large list of things to do in our new city. Sarah asked me why I wanted to have so many things on the list, and it's because having someone visit you is the test of whether or not you've done a good job of making a place your home. By comparison, you're now the expert. Sure, you're not a native, but you're a local, or at least the closest thing they have to one. There's only one…

So there I am in Christiania, the rootingest tootingest frontier hippie commune imaginable, replete with a shady hash trade and a cozy vegetarian cafe, all within a five minute walk. I'm looking for that free tour I've heard so much about because I need to research life in Christiania for a news piece I've been commissioned to write. I go to a place that I think is the Infocafe to get a tour, see two girls behind the counter, one of them is making kanelsnegl. She tells me to go to the next place over to get a tour. I look around and end up at the top a stairwell inside a music venue with a woman with an English accent asking me if I work there. I tell her no, and that I’m looking for a tour. I ask her if she works there and she says no, she's the tour manager for a band called Warpaint that's playing here tonight. A guy in the back says he’ll be out in a minute. We hunt around for a lighter for the English woman's cigarette, peaking behind the abandoned bar, but …